Juanita Nielsen - Victoria Point Development

Victoria Point Development

In the early 1970s, property developer Frank Theeman (? - 1989) planned to construct a A$40 million apartment complex in Kings Cross. Theeman, who had initially made his fortune in lingerie, moved into property development in 1972 after he sold his Osti company to Dunlop for A$3.5 million.

The plan involved evicting dozens of people from their houses in Victoria Street, an area which the National Trust compared to Montmartre in Paris. Built along a steep sandstone escarpment east of the city centre and lined with rows of large 19th-century terrace houses, Victoria Street had commanding views of the city, the harbour and The Domain.

The houses were to be demolished and replaced with three high-rise apartment towers. The local community campaigned against the development, and successfully lobbied the Builders Labourers' Federation (BLF) to impose a green ban on the site in 1972. Supported by the BLF, the residents of Victoria Street, including Nielsen, refused to leave their houses. Nielsen used her newspaper, NOW, to publicise the issue.

In July 1973, resident Arthur King was kidnapped by two unidentified men, who put him in the boot of their car. King was then driven to a motel on the South Coast of New South Wales and held for three days before being released under threat of death. King quit as the head of the residents' action group, and immediately moved out of Kings Cross. It was suspected, though never proved, that the men had been hired by Theeman.

Other residents of the street were regularly harassed by men employed by Theeman, as he attempted to have them evicted from their houses. The men were led by Fred Krahe, a former detective with the New South Wales Police. Krahe had been sacked amidst allegations of organising bank robberies and he was suspected of murdering whistleblower and prostitute Shirley Brifman. and other Sydney crime figures.

Police officers did not intervene as Krahe's men worked. Residents would move in to each others houses so that no house was left unattended. On one occasion, when merchant seaman and jazz musician Mick Fowler returned from a period working at sea, he found that his house had been broken into, and all of his belongings taken. Fowler fought a protracted court battle to stay in his home but the strain of the struggle reputedly led to his early death in 1979, aged 50.

Eventually the green ban was broken in 1974 when the conservative federal leadership of the BLF, under pressure from New South Wales politicians, dismissed the leaders of the New South Wales branch, and replaced them with more conservative people. Nielsen and the residents were left as the only significant opposition to Theeman. Nielsen then convinced the Water Board Union to impose their own green ban. By early 1975, Theeman's company had spent about A$6 million (about A$37 million in 2011 money) purchasing property in Kings Cross, and interest payments on loans were costing about A$3,000 a day.